3 Simple Steps to Boost Your LinkedIn Profile

If you read my post a few weeks back, you’ll know that I recently attended The Big Social Media Conference. If you didn’t get chance to read it, check it out later for the Top Tips and Tools in Social Media.

One of the many actionable items that I wanted to follow-up on was fixing my LinkedIn profile.

I knew it needed some love and attention, and after listening to Melonie Dodaro I had some ideas about how to tackle it.

In this post, I am going to share how I revamped my LinkedIn Profile, and how you can boost your LinkedIn Profile too.

My LinkedIn Story

I remember many years ago, when a colleague told me I needed to join LinkedIn.

We had email. It was quite new and groovy at the time, so who needed LinkedIn or Social Media?

Anyway, I created a LinkedIn profile (of sorts) but did nothing else with it because quite frankly, ‘I didn’t get it!’

Why I needed to change my LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn became more popular in business circles and around 2009 I started to get serious about using it. Back then it was, in my mind at least, a way of having your CV online for recruiters to contact you with opportunities.

I created a new profile because the original one had become obsolete. My profile was there purely to showcase my skills and attract potential recruiters.

I also used it as a means of connecting with colleagues and clients that I worked with.

On the whole it served me well; I built up a network of 500+ connections and received quite a few approaches from recruiters along the way.

However, since leaving my last employer at the end of August 2014 I’d not done anything significant to my LinkedIn ​profile. It lay there gathering dust in memory of my former employment.

Although I had started my own business and was blogging here regularly I never shared my blog posts as status updates.

There were a couple of reasons:

First, I had built up my network from my previous career in the Information Technology Services sector. Who of those connections would actually want to read about my blog? I figured not many would be interested. That’s a bad assumption really!

Second, if I’m honest, I didn’t feel confident enough to share on LinkedIn. Whilst I was quite happy to post updates to Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus, I was somehow intimidated about sharing on LinkedIn.

I think this goes back to my misconception that LinkedIn was primarily a CV stage/job board, and therefore posting updates about ‘Google’s Gas Problem’ was perhaps best served elsewhere.

In short, I misjudged LinkedIn and the reach it can give you.

How I changed my LinkedIn Profile

What’s the first thing you should do before updating your profile?

Backup the old one!

It makes sense, right? If things happen to go wrong it’s always good to have the old profile to revert to.

So, first of all I made a couple of PDF copies​ and a word doc just to make sure I had my existing info that I could copy back in if required.

So, taking that on board, I decided to change several parts of my profile, starting at the top.

Header Section

Step 1 – Get Found

Make sure you pick the right keywords to use in your profile, and remember that any change to your profile is an instant change in Google search, so this is very powerful. Here is the first pass at updating the Header section of my profile:

Previously, I just used to have my current job title pulled in from the Experience section. Now, I’ve decided to add my own description. These need to be your keywords to attract your ideal clients.

The Education has changed because I moved a previous ‘education’ entry to a ‘course’ entry in my profile. You can view LinkedIn to see my whole profile.​

Summary Section

Step 2 – Attract Your Ideal Client

Write a client-focused Summary section: (1) use the first person, (2) identify your ideal client, (3) share how you can help them and (4) include a call to action. Here is the revamped Summary section:

For the time being I’ve kept this very narrow and focussed, but I can add more to it at a later stage. You can see the highlighted components in the screenshot above.

Pro Tip: Write your profile in a Word document to get the formatting correct, and then copy and paste it into LinkedIn.

Publications Section

Step 3 – Stand Out

Make sure you complete your entire profile, not just the summary section, and remember to add some recommendations as these are excellent for social proof. In the remaining sections of my LinkedIn Profile I only made minor adjustments. I already had plenty of recommendations, so I decided to add a Publication section:

LinkedIn Activities

​Making changes to your profile is just one aspect of improving your LinkedIn presence.

As I mentioned above, previously I had not published any of my blog articles as a status update in LinkedIn.

I decided to see what would happen when I did…

Week 1

Look at the impact after Week 1 (13-19 July) when, amongst other activities, I published a blog post:

And drilling deeper:

Result: by becoming more engaged on LinkedIn my profile became more visible, and in turn I received more traffic to my blog and more LinkedIn shares.

Week 2

Now, in Week 2 (20-26 July), I backed off a little and you can see the decrease:

And drilling deeper:

Result: You need to be consistent with your LinkedIn Activities in order to maintain and build your presence.

Summary

I did share another blog post in week 2, but it did not have the same impact as week 1.

I'm a freelance writer working with business owners and marketing teams to create in-depth, actionable content that resonates with their audience. When I'm not writing about digital marketing and technology, you’ll find me chilling with a thriller in Spain.

Hi Brent, I haven’t got a lot of business from LinkedIn, but then again until I just changed my profile I would not have expected it. I have not been using LinkedIn over the past year. Now, I plan to start using it properly, and hopefully getting some business.
– David

What a fantastic post – thanks for sharing this. I admit to neglecting LinkedIn, and only recently got involved in an active group that Adrienne invited me to join.

Thanks for sharing your story, David – I have a similar one. When I started my blog, I didn’t really change my profile information until about 9-12 months into it. I followed a formula one of the experts shared about what to include, etc.

✅ Great advice! Love how the simple advice of backing up your old profile could potentially save someone a lot of time and frustration. Awesome that you included that. ?

Looks like a very professional, yet friendly and to the point profile now – awesome job. I do appreciate the screenshots of your results based on activity – that was interesting.

My assistant adds my links for new content when we syndicate each time, but I need to be more active, that’s for sure. Thanks for this needful article and a great reminder to leverage this awesome platform.

This is my second post of the day that talks about LinkedIn. God must be trying to tell me something LOL.

But this was a great post and motivates me to go to my linkedin profile and make those necessary changes. The only time I’m on linkedin is when I’m sharing a blog post, but I do want to attract other people within my niche as well.

So it would be a good idea to geared your profile towards the interest of your target audience. I also like the idea of backing up your profile also. I never thought about it, but it does make sense!

God moves in mysterious ways, so perhaps he is trying to lead you to LinkedIn 🙂

Seriously, I’m pleased that this post has motivated you to take a deeper look at your LinkedIn profile. I know you share a lot of articles on LinkedIn, so it makes sense that your profile should be ‘spot-on’ for when people check those out.

Yes, definitely find groups where your target audience hangs out and start building some relationships in there. (Note to self to do more of that!)

Not sure whether you saw a link to Melonie’s LinkedIn Code and Cheatsheet I shared a couple of articles back, but here it is again for reference: LiCodeCheatSheet.com – highly recommended!

As you know from one of the posts I recently shared in my Magical Monday roundup that I’ve started paying more attention to LinkedIn now. I haven’t done really well with that platform mainly because I’m more social and they just aren’t very social over there. They’re much more business minded which I can appreciate but you still need to converse with people before that can happen.

Anyway, I’ve pretty much had mine set up from the start but it needed some serious tweaking as well. Even though I haven’t been really active over there I keep getting connections and some of them have worked out really well for me. Of course I like the groups more because those people want to connect with you which is what I like the most.

I appreciate though you taking us through the steps that we each should be doing in order to improve our own profiles because I’m sure not everyone has theirs set up the way they should be. Thank you for taking us through what to do and why. You’re the best.

Hello Pawan, I shall look forward to connecting with you on LinkedIn!
Thanks for sharing and have a great weekend!
– David

Chery Schmidt

Hello David, great tips here to help boost your LinkedIn profile! I never really gave much thought to the keywords, but this sure does make sense. It is a whole lot easier for someone to find you with the right targeted words HUH?

Thanks Skip, I find it much easier to get my message across with screenshots on this type of post – hopefully it makes it clearer for those reading too!

Lawrence Berry

LinkedIn has become one of the biggest ways to attract more customers or employers and having your profile optimized for success is essential. The tips you have provided here are great ways to optimize a linkedin profile. Like you, I was once intimidated by linkedin until I realized the potential it had to grow my business. Thanks for sharing.

I think LinkedIn has been under-rated in the past, but if you put in the right effort, build connections, offer value, then it is as good as the other social media platforms. The groups can be a great way to leverage traction so continue to get involved there.

Dave, interesting blog post, my profile is outdated and not set up right ….Had no great interest to change saw no engagement on LinkedIn. I am looking at it now and trying to make an effort to understand because of a career change. Your information and tips will certainly come in handy.

3 simple steps to boost my LinkedIn profile? I mean who does not want to boost their LinkedIn
profile now huh? 3 simple steps sounded so very doable, the temptation to take my LinkedIn profile to the next level was irresistible. As soon as I’d read this, I was hooked.

What I’d like to contribute here is before getting ready to update your LinkedIn profile create a complete mockup on the new LinkedIn profile in MS Word or Photoshop or whatever, take a
printout or two and show this around to a few trusted friends.

After they have finished rolling over the floor laughing, and have wiped away their tears (Just
Kidding) listen to their suggestions and critique. Apply what you like to your LinkedIn profile and shelve what you don’t for perhaps a re-look on another day.

This approach helped me really improve what I was communicating publicly on my LinkedIn profile.
Oh Yes! One or two did roll over laughing BUT that was at the photograph I was using on my profile.

Your tips to add appropriate keywords in your Header, and write your Summary with your clients focused in your mind were most appropriate. This is really a tad harder than it appears, but once you knuckle down and actually craft these sections thoughtfully the effort pays off handsomely in attracting and holding the right connections.

I need to add a publications section on my LinkedIn profile David. I’m off to set that right immediately after I post this comment on your really well written, beautifully formatted, with all the right images blended in, post.

I saw this article, and thought it is about time to update my LinkedIn profile once more.
Your very helpful outlined steps inspired me to do that finally, and does reflect much more now where I am positioned. Definitely a part of self-marketing. — Thank you for that little kick! 🙂